Mar 31, 2014

"Dur Dur Band" from Somalia (Thanx, Likembe) (get it)

This is a cassette of Dur Dur,
a group from Somalia which was very popular in the 1980’s. John at Likembe writes about similar experiences. He presents also a lot of more information about Dur Dur in a another posting.

Because of the civil war in Somalia the group had moved to Ethiopia
where they published this cassette in the early 1990’s. As it was the
practice at that time the cassette was published by a music shop. In
this case it is a shop called Elham Video Electronics. The shop
has two branches one in Negele, Borana and one in Addis Ababa. The
first branch in Negele seems to be the main one. It is located in an
area in southern Ethiopia, which is close to the Ogaden, i.e. the Somali region of Ethiopia.

The musicians

On the cover there are photos of four members of the group written in Latin and Ethiopic script: Zahra, Muktar, Abdinur and Qomal (or Komal). As with a lot of Somalian musicians and artists it is difficult to
obtain mor information about them. Therefor I would be happy for further
information and comments about the group, its members and its music.

Back with a reminder of much, much happier days in Somalia, our good
friend Sanaag passes on almost 80 minutes worth of music by the
legendary Afro-funk band Dur Dur, who were among the most popular groups
in Mogadishu back in the '80s. You may remember them from this post, and this one.
I understand that after the collapse of Somalia in 1991, vocalist Sahra
Dawo and other "newer" members of the group relocated to Columbus,
Ohio, USA, where they have a presence on Facebook.
Sanaag reports that the other members of the "old guard" featured here
are scattered all over the world, except Muktar "Idi" Ramadan who
unfortunately passed away a few months ago in Saudi Arabia.

As usual for Somali recordings of this vintage, the audio quality of
these songs is not up to modern standards, but I'm sure you'll agree
that their musical and historical qualities more than compensate. Here's
what Sanaag has to say about them:

Durdur's songs are almost always drenched in love. To the best of
my knowledge, they didn't address social or political issues during the
military dictatorship and that's why their lyrics didn't make a lasting
impression on me or flare up my interest in the band; hence my sketchy
knowledge about their work and background. I was really delighted with
the post-Siad Barre cassette Andreas posted at Kezira, in which they've several socially engaged tracks.

These
songs are mainly in southern vernacular languages. I hail from about
1100 kms further up North and, though I understand the basics fairly
well, I don't have the required baggage to fathom the linguistic and
literary subtleties inherent to these dialects. Neither can I
contextualize the songs since I don't know if, as was common during the
military dictatorship, some of the songs were meant as protest double
entendres, were adopted as such by the general public, if events were
associated with them etc. That's why I'd rather not venture into
summarizing, let alone publicly interpreting, the lyrics. Nevertheless,
all the songs are conspicuously about love and I've tried to translate
the tracktitles. Corrections are, of course, most welcome!

Disclaimer

Some posts have download ("get it") links. Check out the comments!!!

"Get it" links on this blog are not hosted on my own servers but were collected from another sites, therefore, if the "get it" link is not available anymore, don't ask me for uploading it again. I'm not gonna do it!

The music is generally out-of-print or otherwise difficult to obtain on the open market. It is posted here out of love and respect for the music and the artists!Moreover, download links are not available for albums which are recently published, I just add links to albums of some old tunes which are not available anymore at official sellers.

Anyway, if you like the albums please support the artist by buying the original CD or vinyl. Your are strongly encouraged to support the musicians! If your music is posted on this blog and you would like it removed please email: